The anti-establishment establishment

If you were to map the geographic center of the conservative uprising against the national GOP establishment, you might settle on a point somewhere in Alexandria, Va. — just within the ring of the Capital Beltway — where a pair of decades-old public relations firms work overtime to stoke and channel the fires of activist outrage.

One peek at any Washington reporter’s email in-box would confirm the omnipresence of the two companies: CRC Public Relations and Shirley & Banister Public Affairs. During almost any given controversy, there’s a barrage of indignant subject lines from both firms cementing the backbone of what the national press calls the “anti-establishment” message of the day. Call them the anti-establishment establishment.

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Last week’s uproar over the Conservative Victory Project, the American Crossroads-and Karl Rove-backed initiative to pick favorites in 2014 Senate primaries, was a vivid case in point. Unveiled in a Sunday New York Times story, the new Crossroads group triggered an immediate outcry on the right, led by a parade of CRC and S&B clients.

The rhetorical conflagration that followed neatly illustrates how quickly any given dispute can turn into a full-blown political firestorm — and how an authentic clash between the Washington establishment and the conservative grass roots plays out in practice through day-to-day duels between different groups of D.C.-area operatives.

The anti-Crossroads backlash kicked off in earnest on Monday, Feb. 4, the day after the Times story ran. Media-bashing conservative activist Brent Bozell took aim at the group in a statement fuming that “the days of conservatives listening to the moderate GOP establishment are over” (Subject line: “Bozell: Moderates With Their Disastrous Record Must Be Rejected by GOP.”) When Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio dismissed Bozell as a “hater,” a roster of movement conservatives signed a letter demanding that the group’s president fire him. (Subject line: “Conservatives call on Steven Law to fire Jonathan Collegio over Bozell attack.”)

Colin Hanna, leader of the group Let Freedom Ring, issued a message blasting “the establishment ‘consultariat’ in Washington D.C.” seeking to control the will of primary voters. Former Pat Buchanan campaign manager Terry Jeffrey declared at the website CNSNews.com: “Karl Rove is Not a Conservative.” By Friday, the activist group Tea Party Patriots had accused Rove’s groups of wasting $300 million on the last campaign and formed their own super PAC, the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund — “aimed at holding big spending politicians accountable for their actions.”

Every one of those activists and groups is a client of either CRC or Shirley & Banister. Virtually every shot they fired at Rove and Crossroads last week moved through the conduit of the PR firms’ email servers, landing on the BlackBerrys and iPhones of reporters across Washington.

The promotion strategy appears to have worked. A Nexis search for news stories last week turns up 57 results for the name of American Crossroads head Steven Law — the man who announced the creation of the Conservative Victory Project, and who commanded a nine-figure budget during the 2012 campaign. Bozell, best known as the caustic founder of the Media Research Center and a more modestly funded nonprofit dubbed ForAmerica, got 55 hits over the same period.